A Note About and From the Author

Raymond Keen was educated at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Oklahoma. He spent three years as a Navy clinical psychologist with a year in Vietnam (July 1967 – July 1968). Since that time he has worked as a school psychologist and licensed mental health counselor in the USA and overseas, until his retirement in 2006. He is a credentialed school psychologist in the states of California and Washington, and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington. Raymond lives with his wife Kemme in Sahuarita, AZ. They have two grown children, Anne-Elise and Michael.

Love Poems for Cannibals is the author’s first volume of poetry. He is also the author of a drama, The Private and Public Life of King Able, which will be published in late 2013. Raymond’s poetry has been published in 24 literary journals.

Raymond writes, “I was born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado. Back in my childhood of the 40’s and my adolescence during the 50’s, I believed in human greatness and human virtue. I had respect for authority, and believed that life was fundamentally fair and could be understood as a rational narrative. I believed that a human being could, through words, come close to expressing the truth, even if only a momentary fragment of this truth. I now realize that I may have been overly optimistic. Human verbal communication characteristically obscures the truth, as it covers the truth with the repetitive cliché. My poetry attempts to make that insight present and palpable and undeniable. Although I sometimes may succeed in getting through or beyond the cliché, I make no claims on truth.”

Listen to Raymond Keen read from his book:

I had a poetry reading from my Love Poems for Cannibals at the Joyner-Green Valley Branch Library in April, 2014. The reading was videotaped, and put on U-Tube in 4 parts. The entire reading is a little over 62 minutes.